Flare
by Starry Knights
Summary: Mikasa Ackerman joined the Scouting Legion on her own and gets stranded outside the walls. Slight AU? Still SNK universe, but different conditions.
1. Prologue

"What do you mean you _left her there_?!" a furious father grabs the commander by his collar.

"We were under attack, and she wasn't with the rest of the group," the commander takes hold of the man's wrist, forcing him to let him go. "I'm very sorry, but we couldn't stop to take inventory on who was and wasn't following along."

""Inventory"?! Is that all your soldiers are to you? Livestock?!" he shouts. His comment cuts deep into the entire squad. They understand the accusations, but know trying to explain would only cause more grief. She wasn't the only casualty of the mission.

"I value my soldiers lives more than my own, I can assure you," the commander asserts. "I do not hold the casualties on our missions lightly. I am deeply, deeply troubled that we couldn't save her, but there was nothing we could have done."

He backs away in disbelief, in shock, asking how this could have happened. His youngest daughter, lost beyond the walls, in that forsaken forest. And the light was soon fading. As much as he didn't want to believe it, he knew she wouldn't last the night.

No one could.


	2. Chapter 1

How she had managed to stay hidden for as long as she had was a miracle in and of itself, but with her luck fading with the light and her clothing becoming less and less suitable for the dropping temperature, she doubted she would have much more survival time. Mikasa Ackerman wasn't sure just how long she had been walking, since she'd gotten separated from the group, but her legs were killing her.

She needed to stop for the night, and soon. And that thought scared her. Because if she stopped, she'd be a sitting duck. She looked up at the trees; she'd wanted to preserve as much of her 3DMG's gas as she could. Using it would be quicker to get around, maybe even get back, but if she ran out, saw a Titan, and needed to either kill it or flee quickly, she wouldn't be able to. So even though she was tired, she continued to push herself to her limit on foot before finding a nice high perch to call it a night.

It was the only way she was going to survive the night.

Her stomach grumbled, aching for fuel, or even just a few drops of water. But there were no rivers or streams in the immediate area and it was too dark to go looking for one. Besides, judging from the survivor's rule of four (4 weeks without food, 4 days without water, 4 minutes without air) she had three and a half days before needing to replenish. Dehydration was never good, but she didn't have the luxury of making it a priority. Out in this climate, it was either wait to find food, or become food.

Her knees buckled underneath her; she stumbled, and decided it was time to stop. The light was fading from the sky, making a good spot in the trees harder to see. She would be firing blindly.

Well, it's better than sleeping on the ground.

As she pulled the trigger, the wires hissed past her face and hooked themselves somewhere in the blackness of the canopy and, a second later, she was whizzing through the air, with no idea where she was going to land, thus ending up with a plank of hard oak bark in her face. Thankfully, a branch was not far away. She rested her back against the trunk of the tree and let her aching feet dangle over the sides of the branch she sat herself on. It wasn't at all comfortable, but would do for tonight. It would have to.


	3. Chapter 2

Soft sunlight nustled Mikasa's eyes, coaxing her awake. It was happy, warm, inviting. Crisp, fresh oxygen filled her well rested lungs. In the distance, she could hear the faint tune of the birds's late morning song. It was welcoming, beautiful. For those few blissful moments, before her better sense kicked in, she was at home. Nothing happened. She was five years old, camping outside the city with her sisters and father. She would open her eyes and see the tops of tall trees and the brilliant blue sky. Well, she did see the tops of trees, but only because she was up amongst them. The events of the previous night rushed back, almost knocking her off her high perch.

_Titans._

_Lots of them. Had to be at least fifty. They were everywhere. It was an ambush._

_Captain? What are the orders? Do we fall back?_

_Captain?_

_Running. So tired. Out of breath._

_Can't stop._

_Stop and die._

The private felt nauseated and hungry and thirsty all at the same time. Water. She needed water. Cottonmouth was the first sign of serious dehydration. Well, I might as well not prolong my suffering, she thought, going to leap down from her high perch, using her 3DMG to make for a safe landing. She searched the forest floor for a stick, and, once found, she stuck it into the ground, a sign of where she had been. Not knowing what direction she should go in to look for water, she decided that any direction would be the opposite way she needed to go, so she might as well go anywhere. It's not like she was going to get any more lost than she already was.

But she could learn to survive until the next expedition out here! They'd find her alive and take her home with them. What a story that would make; the first human ever to survive for days on end outside the Walls with no contact or supplies; completely at the mercy of whatever Titans may be lurking out in this forsaken place. If she could find water, some forest mushrooms, and stay hidden for a few days, she'd be saved. They'd find her. She could stay alive that long, couldn't she?

_Couldn't she?_

She would have to.

The forest seemed to drag on endlessly; everything was the exact same in every direction. As lovely as the green flora was, it offered no comfort, no distraction, to the dizziness fogged her mind, to the hunger that ebbed at her sides. Food would be her next top priority, but she could go without until she found water.

But what if she never did? The crunching of the forest floor stepped along with her footsteps. What if she didn't find water in time? What if help never came? What if her survival skills weren't as good as she thought?

Her mind stirred, thinking she saw movement from behind her, but her reaction time was slowed with weariness. Water. All she needed was water. Blessed, flowing water. Hydration, which fueled her to keep moving-

Wait.

Movement.

_Movement._

Her brain finally registered what that meant, and she whirled around, coming face to face with an eight meter class titan, sporting an eerie smile and lopsided eyes, she thought were the color of mud. But she wasted no time on trying to memorize details of its face.

_Get away._

_Move._

_Run, dammit!_

Mikasa stumbled in the opposite direction, fumbling with the 3DMG, trying to get the wires working in time to make a quick getaway. What she'd been saving her gas for in the first place. But through her trials, the wire hummed and made spitting sound; a sure sign of a jam. The wire needed to be taken completely off the spool and rewound.

Now.

The titan lumbered on behind her, gaining with every step. It was fast, and she was tired. The pace she set, she couldn't keep for very long.

This was it for her, wasn't it? After that long internal monologue about survival and help, just to end in her eaten by a titan after all. It wasn't fair. Even if they'd told her father she'd just gone missing, it'd be useless to come looking for her now. She was a dead woman running. And, unlike other times, she wasn't fortunate enough to have a comrade around to come to her rescue.

Her legs were aching. Her throat felt raw and ragged. She ran on pure adrenaline; all her other fuel sources were empty. But even that would run out sooner or later. Her opponent held no such weakness. It could go on forever, she figured. That's, at least, what the science department figured out.

The steady set of two feet stomping along behind her doubled, and her eyes widened, filling with tears, as she looked her own death in the face. Two titans chased after her. She couldn't outrun one of them, much less both. It's a funny thing, mortality is. You never think about it, know just how close you are to the end, until it stares you in the eyes and spells it out for you.

A mighty roar rang out through the forest from behind her, knocking her clear off her feet. As she dared to allow one fateful look behind her, she could not believe her eyes. Another titan, this one easily closer to fourteen meters tall. But...there was something off about it. Her first clue was that it actually had/used his vocal chords. No other titan she ever encountered before today had, beside the obvious blood thirsty grunt every now and again.

But more so than that...it had ripped the other titan's arm off, and was now proceeding to go for its head. That was the next clue: intraspecial aggression was not common for them, or ever been seen before, for that matter. They ignored each other, and, really, everything that wasn't the humans they preyed on. These two were (well, really only the one) fighting.

_Over her? _

Somehow she doubted it. For a species that didn't need to eat to survive, they couldn't be fighting over her. After the blood bath was over, the eight meter titan thoroughly pulverized and steaming, as it evaporated, the 14 meter turned its attention back to her. She would have gulped, if her throat hadn't been so dry. As it approached her, this time she couldn't move at all. From lack of fuel, to walking so far, to running for her life, and the stress that came with all of that, her body has given up, even when she had urged it on. Adrenaline had stopped pumping; her body was fresh out of it. All she felt now, all she could feel now, was fear, as it picked her up by the back of her shirt. And slowly, she rose fourteen meters into the air, completely at the mercy of a monster that would show her none.


End file.
